IRA now made up of criminals who never fought the British but line their own pockets

IRA now made up of criminals who never fought the British but line their own pockets

Independent.ie

The last known action, other than smuggling, that the IRA was responsible for in south Armagh was to threaten a woman, aged in her 40s, that if she did not hand over property her family owns to one of the local Provo bosses she would be "found dead in a ditch".

The last known action, other than smuggling, that the IRA was responsible for in south Armagh was to threaten a woman, aged in her 40s, that if she did not hand over property her family owns to one of the local Provo bosses she would be "found dead in a ditch".

The incident is well known about locally but has not generated a complaint to the PSNI.

The woman and her family are highly respectable, hard-working people and the attempt to seize their property is typical of the activity that the local Provos have engaged in since they officially stopped being part of the IRA's war machine.

In any normal society, there would be swift action by police, arrests and a prosecution in court. In south Armagh, as one Provo boss notoriously stated, loudly and publicly in Crossmaglen: "We are the f***ing law."

The reason why there was no complaint to the PSNI is that making a complaint to the police is tantamount to 'touting' or informing, an offence the IRA traditionally punished by murder.

The south Armagh IRA, a motley selection of 'republican' families who Gerry Adams lionises every time he has the chance, have been seizing property, beating and murdering people and using the term 'criminal' to demonise their victims for years.

Virtually nothing has been done about it.

They branded a young local man in south Armagh a 'criminal' in February of this year, forcing his mother to appeal publicly for the threat to her son to be lifted. The publicity worked - for the moment.

The Quinn family from Cullyhanna did not have recourse to any form of help after their son Paul, by all accounts a decent young man, took exception to the son of one of the Provo families attacking a young local woman. Paul put the culprit in his place, using only his fists. He too received the threat of ending up "in a ditch" but ignored the warning.

Paul's defiance of the IRA was too public. Fifteen to 20 men tricked him into going to a disused barn in Co Monaghan. As many as 11 or 12 of them, dressed in boiler suits and gloves, beat him to death with cudgels including steel bars and lengths of wood studded with nails.

Prior to Paul's murder in October 2007, the same people had inflicted brutal beatings on two other local men. In both cases the victims had 'defied' the IRA by buying and trying to build on land which the Provo families coveted. Both men were left with permanent crippling injuries.

Another victim upon whom they unleashed their full animalistic fury was Eamon Collins, the ex-IRA man who wrote a book naming his former accomplices and giving evidence for the Sunday Times in its libel defence against Thomas 'Slab' Murphy, Gerry Adams's friend and "good republican". The post mortem showed Collins had suffered the same type of prolonged beating with cudgels and bars that would be repeated in the Quinn murder.

One of the significant characteristics of the IRA 'leadership' in south Armagh is that almost none of those who claim the mantle of militant republicanism actually took part in any action against the British Army.

Those IRA volunteers who did fight in the early days and who are still alive have almost entirely turned their backs completely on the IRA and Sinn Fein. Others who fought on, including many who served lengthy jail terms, later came to question the whole reason for the IRA campaign.

The criminal nature of the current south Armagh is as notorious as it is flagrant. The "good republicans" as Adams terms them - or diesel millionaires as everyone else calls them - are easily identifiable by the flash cars outside their Southfork-style houses.

The view from those who have watched the evolution of the 'old' IRA into a Hibernian Mafia is that the common criminals, smugglers and fuel launderers who have been posing as patriots in south Armagh are also dragging Sinn Fein into their toxic mire.

As one said: "What other political party would close ranks around murderers, paedophiles and fuel launderers poisoning the land where their own people live?"